Jeff Higginbotham, Ph.D. (cdsjeff@gmail.com)
For over thirty years, I have studied the interactions of individuals who use augmentative communication (AAC) technologies and developed technologies to facilitate face to face communication. My early work explored the influence of AAC interfaces on social interaction and the basic efficiency characteristics of AAC technologies. In the mid- 1990’s I helped to start Enkidu Research, which developed some of the first handheld AAC technologies. With David Wilkins, we developed Frametalker, a technology for the use of utterance- based communication in AAC (received 4 patents), which was licensed by the Dynavox Corporation. As a founding member of the Rehabilitation and Engineering Research Center for Communication Enhancement (1998 – 2014), my laboratory was responsible for the development of automated data logging technologies for AAC and dynamic word prediction that uses the internet for dynamic fringe vocabulary. During this time my lab has also pursued research how people adapted their communication styles to interact through these technologies, focusing on the impact of operational time delays on the ability to conduct successful social interactions. My lab has also been involved in studying the talk-in-interaction of medical personnel conducting robotic surgery.
Antara Satchidanand, MA Ed., CCC-SLP (satchida@buffalo.edu)
Before becoming a speech pathologist, I was a middle school English teacher and diversity educator for 10 years. I began my PhD work as a research assistant for a collaborative project through CADL, examining interaction and miscommunication in robot assisted surgery. The foundation I developed in microanalysis while completing my first project propelled me into my current research interests, examining the impact of technology on interaction between typically-abled communicators and those using augmentative and alternative communication (AAC). In the future I hope to use the study of interaction to better understand the impact of technology on interaction in various contexts including the impact of adults’ mobile device on their interactions with children in home or therapeutic settings or how point of care documentation impacts SLPs relationships with mature adult clients in a skilled nursing setting. I continue to be interested in diversity education and advocacy, particularly peer sensitivity training, especially for teens and young adults.
Jordynn Koroschetz, MA (jordynnk@buffalo.edu)
I am a recent graduate from the University at Buffalo MA program in Communicative Disorders and Sciences – Speech Language Pathology. I received a BA in Psychology with a focus in Applied Behavior Analysis from Binghamton University in 2014. My involvement in CADL started with my master’s thesis, which focused on the impact of composition delay on augmentative communication talk-in-interaction. I am interested in pursuing this topic in more detail during my future work at the lab.
Kayla Conway, BA (kconway5@buffalo.edu)
I am a graduate student at the University at Buffalo in the Communication Disorders and Sciences MA program. I received a Bachelor of Science from SUNY Fredonia in 2020. During her time at Fredonia, I was a research assistant in Emily Zane’s lab, transcribing and analyzing language samples of children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). My academic interests include studying conversation analysis and improving the designs of AAC systems.